Twitter Planning to Fight Abuse By Introducing a New Tool

Social media websites often take steps to ensure their users aren’t harassed or abused in any way. They aren’t fully successful in doing this, but still they try. However, when it comes to Twitter, over the years it has become a safe heaven for Internet bullies.

People get abused, harassed and have even received death threats via Twitter. One of the major issues the company faced was “doxing,” in which user’s personal information is posted online such as home address, phone number, bank details etc. This can potentially lead to real life abuse and harassment.

Doxing was also a major issue for some female writers and video game developers who were harassed and abused continually by some bullies affiliated with the “GamerGate.” Twitter, wasn’t doing much to help the situation. Thankfully, that has changed as Twitter finally decided to take some serious steps to secure its users.

Twitter is adding a new feature that will allow users to flag and report any tweet that shouldn’t be made public. It’s similar to the one Facebook is using but it’s a bit surprising how long it took Twitter to realize its need.

That’s not all, the social networking site has even increased their staff related with abuse reporting. According to Twitter:

We streamlined the process of reporting harassment on Twitter recently; now we’re making similar improvements around reporting other content issues including impersonation, self-harm and the sharing of private and confidential information. These changes will begin rolling out today and should reach all users in the coming weeks.

It is also introducing a new system that will allow the company to track bullies and serial harassers via their phone numbers. This will make it difficult for such people to create multiple accounts.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo stated that it’s his “personal responsibility” and he will do everything he can to reduce harassment that Twitter users encounter.

It’s great to see Twitter is finally taking this more seriously. Are happy with the steps Twitter is taking to deal with this issue? Let us know in the comments.